A key element to enhance urban distribution is the adequate management of parking space, particularly for loading and unloading operations. An in-advance booking system able to be adjusted to users needs can be a very useful tool for city councils. Such a tool should be fed with criteria for allocating requests to time slots. In this paper we discuss alternative criteria for the parking slot assignment problem for urban distribution and we propose the use of mathematical programming formulations to model them. Several models are proposed, analyzed and compared among them. Extensive computational experience is presented with a detailed analysis and comparison, which provides quantitative indicators of the quality of each of the proposed models. •We define the parking slot problem assignment for urban distribution.•We propose alternative models according to different optimization criteria.•Extensive computational results are presented and analyzed.•Quantitative indicators of the quality of each model are introduced.